Creation by Steve Grand Chapters 11-15

The Main Idea Chapter 11 “Igor, Hand Me That Screwdriver” “Life is not the stuff of which it is made – it is an emergent property of the aggregate arrangement of that stuff.” “Intelligence cannot be abstracted – we have to build a whole organism.” “Our task is not to program in intelligent behaviour, but to enable such behaviour to emerge from simulated objects that embody the cybernetic properties from which life emerged in the natural world.”

Chapter 12 “I Am Ron’s Brain” The basics are programmed as “genes” Cocktail party effect – filtering information Decision making Making connections and memories Recycling memory space and forgetting information Drawing on previous experiences to generalize and learn

Chapter 13 “Three Parts Gin To One Part of Vermouth” Reduction of drives represents reward Hunger drive and energy storage Illness and Immune system Sex drive and reproduction - genes and mutation  evolution! Aging Language

Chapter 14: “Taking Over the World”

The scary side of AI Machine Take Over Humans becoming slaves or domestic pets to amuse machines Machine intelligence will surpass that of human kind All leads to the unforeseeable future of the machine takeover!!

Don’t fear intelligence The more intelligent something is, the more rational, considerate, and thoughtful it will be. The same should apply to AI machines. We are already slaves to our current technology because it does not understand what we want it to do. It is not smart enough to work it out on it’s own.

Why won’t AI surpass natural intelligence? Intelligence cannot be abstracted So far reasoning machines cannot learn We will define the machine’s desires, drives, and needs. Who says that our own intelligence has reached it’s optimal level?

Is artificial evolution out or our hands? Are we really letting our creations off the leash? Letting artificial evolution create is more an admission of defeat.

What will life be like then? No one can predict the future But….can tell you the future that can be worked toward.

The near future Intelligent machines probably are actually artificially stupid. –Not necessarily machines with intelligence of humans, but rather the intelligence of mammals up to and including some primates. –The importance relies on given motivations and goals.

The Dinosaur Garbage Disposal Synthetic life forms will enjoy what they do and their working lives due to the desires and motivations that the creator gives them. The Flintstones example. The intelligent car example.

Interaction with intelligent machines Interaction with artificial life forms in Creatures Creature Cruelty Creature infamy –A million creature owners –400 websites

Chapter 15: “Vapourware”

Just like clockwork? Time to show that we as humans live lives unlike clockwork Three things that we believe to separate us: –Free will –Minds –Souls

Free Will Argues against existence of free will –“ability to choose our own actions and decide our own future” If this to be true future cannot be determined from past. An effect with no cause is random –There may be no such thing as random Random simply means that an effect has causes that are unknowable or inevitable

Where does this take us? If there is no free will, then we are “slaves” in our own predetermined circumstances. We need to believe in free will in order to survive. Even though our future is inevitable from our past, we are not “slaves” because the future is unknowable. To predict something, it has to be acted out. –Example: Conway’s Game of life and the existence of the glider.

A necessary balance Somewhere between free will and “slaves of our circumstances” there exists a belief to seek the right balance of the two.

The mind Associate with consciousness and self awareness Created Creatures are alive but not conscious A mind is hard to define and cannot yet be created An observation though is that a mind is an emergent, persistent phenomenon that arises from inside a virtual space. This is familiar with a digital computer that can simulate (imagine). This can create a space to build life and intelligence.

Souls Mind is product of our bodies Can there be a disembodied mind? (soul) Believes that recording the state of your brain and passing it into a machine is theoretically possible, but unlikely to happen anytime soon. 1 st law of cyberspace

Grand Finale Brain is the ultimate simulator Imagination drives us Dedication of closing chapter to Ron and Eve, the original Creatures